Of Bicarbonates and Boredom
by Idlewild
Summary: John gets annoyed and goes out to find silence. Sherlock gets introspective and decides to put one of his less known talents to use. Silliness ensues.


**A/N: **This popped into my head last night and demanded to be written, and as I do believe tasks are sentient beings, I had to comply. It's totally unbetad and everything, but I had fun writing it.

* * *

When Sherlock exclaimed "Bored!" for the fifth time in one hour, John suddenly snapped.

'I'm trying to blog here, Sherlock! You are aware that my blog gets you clients, right? And I can't think with you constantly flapping about in here and throwing out pointless adjectives!'

He slammed the lid on his laptop, yanked the cord out of the wall and tossed them both into his satchel, all in one impressively fluid, if angry, motion. Sherlock filed the number five away for future reference and tried to look as unperturbed as possible. Why should he care that John was so easily annoyed? Why _did_ he care that John was now throwing his jacket on in a snit? And why did his mouth insist on asking 'Where are you going?' in a voice that to his own ears sounded like the incarnation of a juvenile canine?

'I'm going to an internet café. Where it's quiet." John shoved his feet into his boots and headed for the stairs. He stopped in the doorway, did that thing with the clenching of the fists and turned back around. 'D'you know what, if you're so bored, why don't you try _doing_ something? I hear action is a cure for boredom. There are plenty of things that need doing in this household, you know."

He looked more resigned than vexed now, as though he had given up on Sherlock ever undertaking any of those tasks that apparently needed doing. (How could a task need anything, anyway? Tasks weren't exactly sentient beings.) Worse, he looked disappointed. Sherlock stared after him as he thundered down the steps, then gave an inarticulate growl of frustration and threw himself down in his chair. He would _not_ go and look out of the window after John. Why did he even _want_ to go look out that window?

'You never complained like that,' he sighed, turning to the skull on the mantelpiece. The skull remained skullingly silent, but its eye sockets seemed to regard Sherlock with reproach. 'Stop looking at me like that, I can't help it that he's so sensitive!'

The skull kept up its reproachful look, now with some disappointment of its own thrown in for good measure. Sherlock turned away from it as he rose, only belatedly realising that his feet had taken him to the window despite his earlier protestations. John, of course, was long gone from sight, the street teeming with tourists and taxis.

Somewhere in Sherlock's chest, a feeling was making itself known, and he recognised it, rare though it was, as guilt. He didn't want John to have to run off to internet cafés, or out on one of his walks (always Regent's Park, obvious from his soles). He wanted John here, disturbingly. This was something he would have to accept: he didn't care for solitude anymore, not when John was the alternative.

Maybe they were right, John and the skull. Maybe he could be more helpful. Maybe he should be less childish.

Sherlock replaced his violin, which he hadn't noticed himself starting to play, and turned to survey the flat. It looked decently tidy to him; he knew where everything was. It might be considered a bit unusual, he supposed, to have a mummified hand nailgunned to the wall and piles of autopsy reports under the sofa table, but those had seemed the best places for them. Where else was he supposed to put them? Whenever he tried to tidy things up a bit, everything just appeared to get more messy, and he ended up not knowing where essentials like that were any longer.

Cleaning was out, then, and dull besides. Perhaps he could go grocery shopping? He reluctantly approached the refrigerator, not sure what he would find in there. Not a single experiment, that much he knew. He had none on at the moment, and even the kitchen table looked more or less like a kitchen table was supposed to. Clean. Boring. He opened the fridge, hoping it would be well-stocked enough to save him from the drudgery and confusion of going to Tesco's. It was. He could recall John coming home last night with far more bags than a man with a bad shoulder should probably be carrying.

John would be home in fifty-three minutes, according to Sherlock's calculations. He would have gone to their nearest internet café, a ten minute walk away, he had been gone for twenty-seven minutes already, and those places charged you by the hour – exorbitantly so unless the owner owed you a favour. When he got back, he would either be as irate as before or more cheerful, depending on how much writing he'd gotten done, and bets were heavily against him. Despite what John seemed to think, internet cafés in Central London during prime tourist season were far from tranquil. If he got home and there was no tangible evidence that Sherlock had done something useful, he would pitch a fit and mope all evening. Tangible evidence – yes! Brilliant.

* * *

Fifty-three minutes later, the kitchen looked like anything but a science lab as John's steps sounded on the stairs. Sherlock tried to school his face into a neutral expression, so as not to look as proud as he felt over his recent actions, when John came through the door.

Hanging up his jacket, he began 'I though Mrs Hudson wasn't ge...' then trailed off with an '... oh' as he took in the state of the kitchen and its occupant.

'They'll be done in two minutes,' Sherlock informed him. John was gaping, and then his expression slid effortlessly from extreme surprise via glee to stop at delighted fascination.

'I didn't know you could bake!'

'Of course I can bake. Baking is just chemistry, and not even very challenging as someone has already made all the calculations and written an unnecessarily detailed instruction manual. I prefer to make my own experiments, but I _can_ follow instructions. Occasionally.'

John was smiling widely now, observing the mess of bowls and flour on the table. 'Who'd have thought?' he said, going for teasing and missing it by several nuances. He sounded utterly impressed. 'Amazing.'

'It's not amazing. Anyone can do it.'

'I can't.'

'I'm sure you can, you just have to follow the directions in the cook book.'

'Yeah, about that...' John cast another look around the kitchen in confusion, 'We don't even have a cook book. And there isn't one in here.'

'I perused Mrs Hudson's. Those biscuits have _two_ raising agents in them, which I had to borrow somewhere.'

'Mrs Hudson isn't even home,' John reproved, but he was still smiling.

'Which means she won't notice anything, will she?' Sherlock countered.

John shook his head in defeat, laughing. Just then, Sherlock's phone chirped, announcing the biscuits to be ready. He pulled them out of the oven with a flourish, setting the baking sheet down on a cork pad on the table. They were looking rather pretty already, Sherlock thought: golden dough surrounding a jam he'd fashioned from blueberries left forgotten in the freezer. John reached out a hand which Sherlock batted away.

'They're not done yet, and you'll burn your fingers if you take one now. You could make yourself useful by making tea or something.'

'Fine, sorry...' John held up his hands in surrender and set about clearing the table of ingredients. 'So, you memorised the recipe, then, did you?'

'Oh, never fear, I'll delete it again immediately,' Sherlock said, drizzling icing over the biscuits. John laughed again, then came over to admire the progress.

'Can I try?' he asked, indicating the plastic bag of white paste in Sherlock's hands. Sherlock handed it over, and within ten seconds two of the biscuits had been rendered unrecognisable by big, haphazard blobs.

'See, what did I tell you?' John sighed, 'I'm rubbish at this!" He tried to hand the bag back over with a pleading face, but Sherlock stepped away from the table.

'Practice makes perfect, John. You can finish the rest while I...' he regarded the messy worktop with a barely repressed sigh '... wash up.'

'I can do that!' John quipped.

'You always do that.'

'Which is why I'm good at it. You do the hard stuff, I'll do the dishes.'

Sherlock debated which was more worth it, teasing John or getting away from the sink. It was a very short debate. 'Absolutely not. I've made the biscuits, which, by the way, was "the hard stuff", and now you get to decorate them.'

'Decorate is not the term I'd use...' John sighed, but he turned back to the sticky task at hand. Sherlock had time to clean most of the utensils before the last biscuit had had a running-over of frosting. He was pleased to note a definite improvement in technique between the first and the last.

'Not bad, John,' he approved, making sure to inflect some irony into the words.

'Easy on the sarcasm there, I'm armed!' John giggled, aiming the mostly empty bag of sugary substance at his friend, and now it was Sherlock's turn to throw his hands up and capitulate.

A little while later, the two were seated at the table, tea and biscuits between them. John eyed the blotchy ones dejectedly before picking one of Sherlock's more stylish-looking creations. Sherlock pointedly selected the whitest, clumsiest biscuit on the plate. As he could see that John was about to tell him not to be a martyr – tell-tale tilt of the head there – he interjected 'What? I like icing!'

John shrugged, grinned and bit into his biscuit. His eyes closed and he moaned with rapture, licking his lips and turning them blue. Sherlock smiled and finally allowed his pride free reign. Perhaps he wouldn't delete this recipe just yet.

* * *

**Ending notes:**

The nailgunned hand may or may not be a hat tip to BeautifulFiction and her lovely To Light Another's Path. Make of it what you like. ;)

Also, I love reviews!


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